Pop-up store or pop-up shop. Whatever term you choose to use, these temporary retail sites are becoming more and more common as a trend in today’s economic environment. According to http://www.popupinsider.com/, the definition of a pop-up shop is “a temporary retail or event space used for generating sales and marketing brands; a solution to the economic challenges facing both landlords and retailers.” With the national retail vacancy rate at a three-year high, it makes sense for both retail operators and landlords to do whatever they can to increase revenue.
Some traditional pop-up stores include costume or Halloween sites that are only open in September and October, or specialty holiday shops open around Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, Gap recently opened a pop up shop in New York City of its strictly-online Piperlime brand. The store will only be open for 25 days in September during New York’s fashion week. While some temporary retail outlets have been using this business model for years, today retailers of all sizes and concepts are taking advantage of these opportunities as a way to test the water without breaking the bank.
Here are some of the ways pop-up shops can be effective for retail businesses for those who are considering opening one themselves or are just curious about this new trend:
** Online-only retail merchants can cheaply experiment to see how they do in a physical space.
** Retailers can gauge interest and see how successful their business could be in new markets.
** Retailers can get rid of marked-down or old inventory.
** Pop-up shops are a great way to build brand awareness around goods and services.
** If a retailer is certain they want to open a new site, they can experiment with different sized stores to see how much space they actually need.
While testing with pop-up stores can give a retailer great insight on what markets they can be successful in and how much space they need, an interesting twist is that opening a temporary store may actually tell a retailer that they don’t need a physical retail store or a large store at all. This could save them thousands of dollars in the long-run.
Pop-up stores can also be opened cheaply by negotiating a deal with the landlord and working with other friends or contacts in your market that may have extra space in one of their stores you could test for free. Promotion of pop-up stores can also be done simply and with little to no expense through social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
Radiant Systems can assist in making it easy and cost-effective to open a pop-up shop with our CounterPoint retail POS solution. CounterPoint software and Radiant POS terminals give you all the benefits of inventory and labor analysis, sales data and credit card processing capabilities, even in a temporary store. Overall, now is a great time for retail operators to take advantage of the current economic climate and experiment in the marketplace. Please reach out for us to receive more information about how CounterPoint can help you open a pop-up store.
Have you had a successful pop-up store experience that helped you make a future business decision? Tell us about it here or feel free to ask us any additional questions you may have about the value of opening a temporary retail location.
Click here to read an article by Inc Magazine with wonderful examples of pop-up shop success.
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